by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

What is the real objective of a US foreign policy in Africa which offers military aid, weapons, logistics and training to the armed forces of more than 50 of the 54 nations of the most war torn and impoverished continent on earth? Is it building and strengthening civil societies? Or is the permanent state of insecurity, dependence, endemic violence and poverty which characterizes Africa today just better for business?

Below are three articles originally published in Black Commentator on June 5, June 19, and June 26, 2003.

In these we initiated a dialog between the editors of Black Commentator and Barack Obama, then a state senator from the south side of Chicago and candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate regarding his ties to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), his opposition to the invasion of Iraq, and questioned him on the repeal of NAFTA and single payer health insurance.

This item was originally published in Black Commentator on May 29, 2003

There are more than one million Black radio listeners apiece in metro Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore-DC, Houston, Philadelphia, and twice that many in the tri-state metro area centered by New York. But not one of these major markets has a single full time black news reporter reporting on and packaging news for a black audience. Not one. It wasn't always this way. What changed and why? What does the absence of news reporting mean to our communities, our futures, to the public space for black on black dialog?

In this May 1, 2003 article, originally published on that date in Black Commentator, Glen Ford explains why the free "Black Pass" of outfits like Radio One and BET must be unconditionally revoked. For the shot callers of commercial black radio and TV, African Americans are not a polity, entitled to our own opinions coming out of our unique histroical experience. For them, we are merely a market.

Corporate media and establishment black "political scientists" want us to believe Rep. McKinney lost her congressional seat because black voters walked away from her, and that her opponent Denise Majette put together some new kind of "biracial coalition." But analysis of the precinct by precinct figures reveal that nothing could be further from the truth.

Bob Johnson, the Black Entertainment Television founder with a personal net worth of $1.3 billion, is a Trojan Horse, an aggressive political operative of the Bush White House posing as a Democrat. He has used his high profile status as one-half of all African American billionaires (the determinedly non-partisan Oprah Winfrey is the other half) to advance the most politically perilous item on the GOP agenda: privatization of Social Security.

On August 8 or 9 I walked into Cynthia McKinney's campaign office and offered to help after work and on weekends for the last ten days. I've served as volunteer in and consultant to a couple dozen political campaigns and voter registration drives in the Chicago area in the 70's, 80's and 90's.

In this May 2, 2002 article, which appeared in the second issue of the Black Commentator, co-founded by Glen Ford, the author continues the examination of the strange career of Corey Booker that began in April 2002's Fruit of the Poisoned Tree. This was published just before Newark's 2002 mayoral election.

In this groundbreaking 2002 article, which appeared in the very first issue of the Black Commentator, co-founded by Glen Ford, the author throws prophetic light on the early career and sponsorship of a new type of African American politician --- Corey Booker in his first run for mayor of Newark NJ.

Our new web site is almost here. The first stage of our makeover was moving our 8 years of content to new servers, which we did over the holidays. The second stage was optimizing the performance of those new servers, which we finished after a brief outage last Thursday. The third stage will be rolling out the new site, with restored images, better sound and new features, coming by the end of this month. Thank you for your patience.

Help us to keep doing this. Make a one-time donation in any amount today.

Please know that being our “friend” or “liking” us on Facebook does not guarantee that you'll see Black Agenda Report's posts in your news feed. Facebook arbitrarily limits the reach of persons and business to 15% of “friends” and “likes”. The only way to be sure you receive weekly updates from Black Agenda Report is to sign up for our weekly email alerts on the left side of this page.